If I was you I wouldn't start from here, so I wouldn't. But tomorrow you have a chance to save us all from the tyranny of the EU.

So what are you going to say when you vote in tomorrow's referendum on the EU Constitution, deceitfully re-packaged as the Lisbon Treaty? You said no the first time, but that was the "wrong" answer for the Eurocrats. What are you going to say this time? Easy:

Tom Cahill wrote a book, once, called 'How the Irish Saved Civilisation'. It should have been called, perhaps, 'How the Irish Saved Western Latin Civilisation', given that Byzantium was at that stage still well and truly in busines; but he had a point, nevertheless.

Now the Irish have their chance again. To save civilisation or, at the very least, to *help* save civilisation...simply by saying No.

"At Tara in this fateful hour/ I place all heaven, with its power/ and the sun with its brightness/ and the moon with its whiteness/ and the fire with all the strength it hath/ and the lightning with its rapid wrath/ and the winds with their swiftness along their path/ and the sea with its deepness/ and the rock with its steepness/ and the earth with its starkness.

All these I place/ by God's almighty power and grace/ between myself and the powers of darkness".

That (a paraphrase - courtesy of American Christian author Madeleine L'engle, as reproduced in her children's fantasy 'A Swiftly Tilting Planet - of part of the famous Rune of St Patrick, or, The Deer's Cry) for the Irish as they go to this vote, and for Ireland, and for Europe.

Guns, Germs and Steel in Tanzania
The Thinking Person's Safari
Led by Geoffrey Clarfield